Joe Biden Says He Would Have Resigned If He Had Known He Had Cancer
Joe Biden Says He Would Have Resigned If He Had Known He Had Cancer
Former President Joe Biden says he would have resigned from the White House and ended his 2024 reelection campaign if he had known he was battling cancer while in office, in a new interview with PEOPLE magazine published Wednesday, November 11.
Biden, 83, told PEOPLE that a cancer diagnosis would have changed everything about his final year in office. He said he would not have sought another term — and would have stepped down — had he known the illness was behind the way he was feeling.
What Biden said
“What I can’t say, because there’s no evidence of it — if I had known that I was feeling lousy because I had cancer, I would have resigned,” Biden told PEOPLE. “I would’ve not gone forward, because I don’t think an 80-year-old man with cancer should be running for [president]. But that wasn’t the case.”
Biden was speaking from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, in an interview conducted on November 5. It is his most extensive on-camera conversation about his health since leaving office, and it comes ahead of the release of his presidential memoir, Promise Me, America, on November 17.
Biden also addressed the suggestion that he or his administration concealed his illness from the American public while he was president. He rejected that claim directly.
“I didn’t do that. We let the public know when I found out, when I knew what was going on,” he said. “I wasn’t hiding it at all.”
His health today
Biden’s office announced in May 2025, 118 days after he left office, that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. The cancer was assigned a Gleason score of 9, indicating a highly aggressive disease.
In the interview, Biden said his latest tests have been encouraging and that he is continuing treatment, including radiation already completed and hormone therapy.
“It looks very positive,” he told PEOPLE. “So far the two tests that have been done show that the cancer is not metastasized beyond what it already was. … There are eight different pills I take a day.”
He also insisted the undiagnosed illness did not affect his ability to do the job. “I, quite frankly, found that it didn’t in any way interfere with my job,” he said, adding, “I never felt the toll.”
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The 2024 campaign and the debate
Biden withdrew from the 2024 race in July of that year and endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris, after his debate performance against Donald Trump drew intense scrutiny over his age and fitness for office.
In the interview, Biden attributed the debate performance to a cold and exhaustion from international travel, and said he did not view the debate itself as a turning point.
“Look, I don’t know anybody who hasn’t made a mistake in a debate,” he said. “To me, it was not very consequential. First of all, I thought there’d be another debate, which there wasn’t.”
Why this matters
Biden’s comments go to the central question of his final year in office: whether his health shaped the decision to seek reelection, and whether the public was told the full story at the time. His answer — that he did not know, and that knowing would have ended both his presidency and his campaign — is the clearest statement he has made on the subject.
The interview also lands days before his memoir’s release, when Biden is expected to face renewed questions about the 2024 campaign and the months that followed his withdrawal. Washington is meanwhile in a season of pointed scrutiny of senior officials, from the Senate inquiry into whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lied to Congress about his Samoa trip to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s public clash with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over Nvidia chip exports to China.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Joe Biden diagnosed with cancer?
His office announced in May 2025, about four months after he left the White House, that he had an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones, with a Gleason score of 9.
Did Biden say he hid his cancer diagnosis while president?
No. He denied it, saying he and his office told the public as soon as he knew what was going on. “I wasn’t hiding it at all,” he told PEOPLE.
When is Biden’s memoir released?
Promise Me, America is scheduled for release on November 17, 2026.
Biden says he did not know he had cancer while he was president — and that knowing would have changed the ending of his presidency. With his memoir days away, the interview is likely to reopen the debate over his final year in office, and over what Americans were told, and when.
Sources: Parade (PEOPLE interview); Katie Couric Media; Baller Alert; Faith Panda; The Hill.
